Sunday, June 22, 2008

Old but Good...

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Polynap Soundtracks and the Twelve-Minute Nap

We've discussed in other posts how some of the Gedolim of past generations used polyphasic or biphasic sleep techniques to maximize their alert and awake time. But even for monophasic sleepers, a shortnap can be a very powerful tool to help get through the day. Last night, for example, I slept only a bit more than three hours, had a baby girl today, and was ready to crash at about 5:30pm. So I took a very short nap. How, you ask, did I ensure that I would both fall asleep and wake in this short time frame? Simple - I put my headphones on and played one of these tracks. They are from a collection of polynap tracks that are on this website, and they have a long period of white noise followed by wake up sounds. The white noise (also blue and brown) helps drown out background noise and also to put one to sleep. The wakeup noises start with a rooster's crow, and become more and more cacophonous until you wake up. (For the record, the rooster's first or second crow usually wakes me.) The mp3 tracks are available in several lengths, and I highly recommend them. (The site used to contain a twelve minute track, too. Apparently, it was removed. Email me if you want a copy.)(With appreciation to a distinguished member of the Community Kollel of Kansas City.)

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Emunah U’Bitachon 1:5

We are presented with another system – one designed with incalculable and other-worldly understanding – that testifies to the wisdom of its maker and its existence is praise to him: The mechanism of male and female union, designed to ensure the eternity of the world. This includes the wondrousness of each gender's organs and the creation of the desire that necessitates their use. Because we are habituated to them, we don't recognize the awesomeness of the Creator – all these He made and established to last forever!

Another mystery – fascinating and wondrous – is the forming of man in his mother's body. He lives there for nine months, a pleasant and well-ordered life. He develops and grows, and when his time comes to leave, he breaks through, and leaves! This is all already hidden in the universe's capabilities, involving complementary forces. All these many forces need to be coordinated, with each doing precisely its job perfectly, until the fresh and ready baby is produced. And the goal of all this effort was already planned in the mind of the Creator of all from its very beginning.

And when the baby does enter the world, his mother's breasts – which nurse him with nutritious milk – are created for him. And the Creator declared that there should be a powerful maternal instinct in the mother, to tirelessly care for her baby. We call this the mother's love for her young. (The child also possesses a prepared behavior in that it knows how to suckle from its mother and to take pleasure from her milk.)

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Segmented Sleep and R' Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm

We've discussed polyphasic sleep and the Vilna Gaonearlier. Another type of sleep pattern that was much more common was segmented sleep, where one sleeps a bit during the day, and is up longer at night. (It's a bit more complicated than that, see the Wikipedia article linked above for more details.) The Alter of Kelm, R' Simcha Zissel Ziv, would - according to his student R' Yeruchum Levovitz - sleep three hours each night and half an hour during the day. But he was still able to learn Torah for eight hours straight.R' Levovitz attributes R' Ziv's accomplishments to his sense of order and his fanaticism for methodicalness in life. R' Ziv would equate orderliness with the clasp of a necklace: "The jewels of the necklace are its most important component, while the clasp is the least significant. Yet if the clasp fails – all the jewels fall. Orderliness is like that – it not particularly important, but it protects everything that is important. If one is orderly and methodic then his Torah, his prayers, his mitzvos will remain protected – he can be sure that they will continue! But one who is disorderly – his jewels fall to the ground… One needs to awaken at a set time, to pray at set time, to begin his learning at a set time, and to stop learning at a set time!"